Schopenhauer, with that brilliant futility which made him so striking considered merely as a literary man, maintains that Christianity is akin to his own pessimism because it rejects the vanities of the world. The remark is a good instance of that class of ingenious observations against which we can say nothing except that they are obviously not true. Any one can see that a man floating in visions of certain felicity is not in the same state of mind as a man who believes all felicity impossible: and the two are not made essentially any more similar by the accident that they both take the same attitude towards something else. Schopenhauer and the most maniacal ascetic of the middle ages are no more like each other than a man who does not take an omnibus because he cannot afford it and a man who does not take an omnibus because he prefers his landau...the monkish felicity was full of the fieriest human images, and if he scoffed at non-religious pleasures it was as a lover might scoff at the mass of women or a patriot at the mass of nations.

-November 17, 1900, The Speaker

"Why not say that crackens and cuttles and all the sea-monsters are themselves flowers; fearful and wonderful flowers in that terrible twilight garden of God?"

"The subject of flowers is hackneyed, but the flowers are not," the poet was insisting. "Tennyson was right about the flower in the crannied wall; but most people don't look at flowers in a wall, but only in a wall-paper. If you generalize them, they are dull, but if you simply see them they are always startling. If there's a special providence in a falling star, there's more in a rising star; and a live star at that."

"Well, I can't see it," said the man of science, good-humouredly; he was a red-haired, keen-faced youth in pince-nez, by the name of Wilkes. "I'm afraid we fellows grow out of the way of seeing it like that. You see, a flower is only a growth like any other, with organs and all that; and its inside isn't any prettier or uglier than an animal's. An insect is much the same pattern of rings and radiations. I'm interested in it as I am in an octopus or any sea-beast you would think a monster."

"But why should you put it that way round?" retorted the poet. "Why isn't it quite as logical the other way round? Why not say the octopus is as wonderful as the flower, instead of the flower as ordinary as the octopus? Why not say that crackens and cuttles and all the sea-monsters are themselves flowers; fearful and wonderful flowers in that terrible twilight garden of God? I do not doubt that God can be as fond of a shark as I am of a buttercup."

-The Poet and the Lunatics (1929)

Anyhow, traveling about alone with nothing but a big Bible, he had learned to study it minutely, first for oracles and commandments, and afterwards for errors and contradictions; for the Bible-smasher is only the Bible-worshipper turned upside down.

-The Poet and the Lunatics (1929)

Anarchy

Anarchism, appeals to absolute liberty, renunciation of limitations as such — all this is incurably futile and childish, because it will not face a fundamental logical fact. This fact is that there is no such thing as a condition of complete emancipation, unless we can speak of a condition of nonentity. What we call emancipation is always and of necessity simply the free choice of the soul between one set of limitations and another. If I have a piece of chalk in my hand, I can make either a circle or a square; that is the sacred thing called liberty. But I cannot make a thing that is both a circle and a square. I cannot make an unlimited square. I cannot draw an emancipated circle. If I wish to make anything at all, I must abide by the limitations and principles of the thing I make. . . . And any man who makes anything whatever, if it be with a piece of chalk, is doing exactly what a man does when he marries or enlists in an army. He is courageously selling himself into a splendid slavery. And, of course, in moral matters it is the same; there is no lawlessness, there is only a free choice between limitations.

-December 21st, 1905, Daily News
Quoted in The Man Who Was Orthodox: A Selection from the Uncollected Writings of G. K. Chesterton, collected by A.L. Maycock (1963)

Various "Speaker" quotes

...frivolity is, in the secretive sense, far more sacred than seriousness; it is more fragile, more personal, more occult. Any one can see St. Paul's Cathedral, but there may be only two people in the world who can see a particular joke...it is not possible, properly speaking, to laugh irreverently at time, death and judgment—for they laugh best who laugh last; but it is possible to laugh very irreverently at a joke.

-October 20, 1900, The Speaker

...religion is a secret passion audaciously made public; it is not strange if its hymns have something of the splendid folly of love-letters...

-October 27, 1900, The Speaker

...the lies of fiction convey truth and the lies of history convey nothing. But there is obviously a distinction between romances in this matter: all good romances convey truth, but not always about the period they describe.

-December 8, 1900, The Speaker

A poem may be written about everything, but not about things in general. To a poet who sings of the universe, the universe must be for the moment one thing—as much one thing as a daisy or a butterfly.

-January 5, 1901, The Speaker

The truth is that we should have the greatest respect for Mr. Wynne's work, with all its crudities, if it bore the impress even of the vulgarest fanaticism. If he had one thing which could be called an opinion we could forgive him everything. But he seems to dawdle round all sides of a question, like a drunkard going continually round a house because he cannot find the door.

-January 5, 1901, The Speaker

The literature of atheism is bound to fail exactly in proportion as it succeeds. The Bolshevists have not merely tried to abolish God; which some think a trick needing some ingenuity. They have tried to make an institution of abolishing God; and when the God is abolished, the abolition is abolished. There can never be any future for the literature of blasphemy; for if it fails, it fails; and if it succeeds, it becomes a literature of respectability. In short, all that sort of effect can only be an instantaneous effect; like smashing a valuable vase that cannot be smashed again.The heaven-defying gesture can only be impressive as a last gesture. Blasphemy is by definition the end of everything, including the blasphemer. The wife of Job saw the commonsense of this, when she instinctively said, "Curse God and die". The modern poet, by some thoughtless oversight, so often neglects to die.

-The Bookman, December 1932

"Where does a wise man hide a leaf?"

"Where does a wise man hide a pebble?"

 And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach."

The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wise man hide a leaf?"

And the other answered: "In the forest."

-The Innocence of Father Brown (1911)

"A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish."

There is one very fixed, and I think very false, conception current in human life--the conception that to laugh at a thing is in some strange way to score off it. The literature of blasphemy, for instance, always assumes that when a thing has been shown to be ridiculous, it has in some way been shown to be disgusting or untrue. So far from having been shown to be disgusting, it has not even been shown to be undignified; so far from having been shown to be untrue, it has not even been shown to be improbable. ... A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish. The round earth itself is so round that it is impossible to say for certain that it is not standing on its head.

-April 18, 1903, Black and White
Quoted in The Man Who Was Orthodox" A Selection from the Uncollected Writings of G. K. Chesterton, collected by A.L. Maycock (1963)

A man makes himself far more practically unpopular by defending popularity than by any other course he can take. It is safe to defend the most oppressive dynasty or the most antiquated priesthood, for they at least will be grateful. But it is always unsafe to defend the mob, for there does not exist a single human being who believes himself to be a member of the mob.

-The Pall Mall Magazine, Volume 25 (September to December 1901)

"Unmeaning and muddle-headed tyranny in small things, that is the thing which, if extended over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of September."

Tyranny like this is not the worst tyranny, but it is the most intolerable. It interferes with men not in the most serious matters, but precisely in those matters in which they most resent interference. It may be illogical for men to accept cheerfully unpardonable public scandals, benighted educational systems, bad sanitation, bad lighting, a blundering and inefficient system of life, and yet to resent the tearing up of a telegram or a post-card; but the fact remains that the sensitiveness of men is a strange and localised thing, and there is hardly a man in the world who would not rather be ruled by despots chosen by lot and live in a city like a mediæval Ghetto, than be forbidden by a policeman to smoke another cigarette, or sit up a quarter of an hour later; hardly a man who would not feel inclined in such a case to raise a rebellion for a caprice for which he did not really care a straw. Unmeaning and muddle-headed tyranny in small things, that is the thing which, if extended over many years, is harder to bear and hope through than the massacres of September.

-Robert Browning (1903)

Chesterton in a movie made by J.M. Barrie (creator of Peter Pan).

J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, and a good friend of Chesterton's, liked to make his own films. Chesterton appeared in one of them, a cowboy film, which you can read about at the following link, including the humorous circumstances of it's production (even if the British Prime Minister at the time didn't find it so amusing). Also included at the link is a picture of Chesterton (as well as George Bernard Shaw and a couple of others) dressed up as cowboys!

http://thebioscope.net/2008/05/30/pen-and-pictures-no-3-jm-barrie/

Red

Red is the most joyful and dreadful thing in the physical universe; it is the fiercest note, it is the highest light, it is the place where the walls of this world of ours wear thinnest and something beyond burns through. It glows in the blood which sustains and in the fire which destroys us, in the roses of our romance and in the awful cup of our religion. It stands for all passionate happiness, as in faith or in first love.

Now, the profligate is he who wishes to spread this crimson of conscious joy over everything; to have excitement at every moment; to paint everything red. He bursts a thousand barrels of wine to incarnadine the streets; and sometimes (in his last madness) he will butcher beasts and men to dip his gigantic brushes in their blood. For it marks the sacredness of red in nature, that it is secret even when it is ubiquitous, like blood in the human body, which is omnipresent, yet invisible. As long as blood lives it is hidden; it is only dead blood that we see. But the earlier parts of the rake's progress are very natural and amusing. Painting the town red is a delightful thing until it is done. It would be splendid to see the cross of St. Paul's as red as the cross of St. George, and the gallons of red paint running down the dome or dripping from the Nelson Column. But when it is done, when you have painted the town red, an extraordinary thing happens. You cannot see any red at all.

Alarms and Discursions (1910)